SPECIAL COMPOST 'TEA' TO REVITALISE SOIL

CYCLES — life cycles, yearly cycles, water cycles, re-cycling — the cyclical nature of horticulture is partly what makes it so interesting.

And as I sit and think about our first year at Torre Abbey Gardens it keeps springing to mind as a sort of theme.

From the stone coffin lid in the Abbey's entrance, with its four circles representing the stages of earthly life, to our 'modern' efforts in the garden to promote sustainability and organic principles, it is always there in the background influencing our day to day activities.

For example, we now have three large compost bays, which are regularly turned and hand sieved (it's a big sieve, though) by the Four Seasons team with enthusiasm and vigour.

Given our sandy, lifeless soil, it's the most valuable asset we have and the difference in growth and plant health where we have used it in our borders is clear for all to see.

To improve things even further we have also been applying compost tea, a recent development in soil science, following the realisation that activity and life under the ground is equally important (if not more so) than the life we see above.

It is strange stuff this tea — a mix of soil micro-organisms, fungus, bacteria and microrrhizae (symbiotic fungus) essential for healthy soil and plants. I appreciate the irony in this; some of our most basic life forms being developed in high tech labs, and arriving in foil packages which look like astronaut food, to put back the life which science took out with pesticides and herbicides. Even so, there is still a cycle there of sorts.

Anyway, after brewing merrily away for 24 hours in water our potent compost tea is diluted further and sprayed on to the soil, taking the organic maxim 'feed the soil not the plant' to new heights.

So far we have applied it to the Palm House and to the Aberfan Rose Bed, where we hope it may help solve the problem of rose plant disorder. Next will be the grass in the centre of the cloister.

As for all Torbay gardeners, our seasonal cycle has been odd this past year. A wet summer last year (moss in the newly-laid lawns, flooding and potholes in the gravel paths) and then that awful cold snap which we thought had put paid to many of our favourite shrubs and trees, though the majority have recovered.

The Brachyglottis repanda — or Bushman's Toilet Paper — in the Australasian border lost all but four of its leaves, while the bottom leaves of the furcraeas turned to mush and had to be cut off, leaving plants which looked like giant pineapples on stalks. The worst damage appears to be to an Itoa orientalis, a rare donated tree which we hoped would flower this year but whose crown has completely succumbed excepting two small branches.

Having said all that, there are plenty of great successes to report.

The furcraeas, with spectacular determination to carry on their life cycle, have shot up their firework flower spikes both in the garden and all over the Bay. We think one of ours is about 13 feet. Can anyone beat that? Tiny plantlets, produced by the hundred, appear as each flower drops. Pot them up in free draining compost and you can give them away to all and sundry.

We were very proud of our exotic Strelitzia flower in the Palm House, which exhibited its wares for over a month and became positively famous. However, right now we think we have something even better to see — the flower of the Ensete ventricosum, (banana) which I can only describe as a giant cigar. Not the best description so please do try to come and see it yourself — it really is amazing.

Cycles, or at least circles, play a big part in the planned knot garden. Garden visitors in the coming weeks should be able to see our central L-beds criss-crossed with strings and pegs and the garden team running around with bags of sand and pots of thyme and lavender. We have included the four circles of the Tree of Life in the design along with other historical motifs to create our own unique hybrid, which we hope reflects the abbey's many layers of historical significance. As a flat planting scheme, the best view should be from the upper windows of the house, though we trust it will still be interesting at ground level.

Torre Abbey Gardens is open to the public from 10am to 6pm daily and costs 70p for adults, 50p for concessions and 35p for children. A season ticket is available for £3 allowing unlimited access to the gardens during opening hours for a whole year.

Four Seasons are part of the Pluss organisation, specialising in horticultural training for people with learning and physical disabilities. For more details contact: 07810 757720.